ACTOR HELPS SIMI TEEN-AGERS TAP INTO CREATIVITY.

Byline: VICTORIA GIRAUD

After 32 years in the entertainment business, actor Sid Haig got tired of playing heavies, and turned his attention to helping teen-agers find their creative spirit in Summer Teenage Theater Workshop.

``This isn't fun anymore,'' Haig, who's 6-4 and and sports a shaved head, said of his typecasting. ``I don't mean I'm never going to act again. I do it on stage in town, but if it's not fun, I'm not going to do it.''

This veteran of 45 films and 350 TV parts got together eight years ago with other Simi Valley residents Kathleen O'Day and David Newcomer to found the teen workshops that started this week. This summer's play, written by O'Day, will be ``Life Sounds,'' a tale of the future depicting how young people find a way around a law banning all self-expression.

``I love to work with kids,'' Haig said, explaining that one of the program's most important priorities is acceptance. ``No one in the program is allowed to make judgments,'' he said.

Haig sees the workshops as an opportunity for teens to meet a wide variety of other young people, ``to bond with kids they wouldn't normally come in contact with. Kids aren't the only ones who walk away with something; so do we.''

Although Haig turned his attentions toward children's theater and a new career directing commercial and educational videos, he has many fond and funny memories of his career. Born and raised in Fresno, he found he had an early ability in dance and in music. By the time he was 7, he was performing in top hat and cane in local dance shows.

At 19, as the drummer for the T-Birds rock band, he was doing nine months of one-nighters all over California, and had a record contract with Keen Records, the popular Sam Cooke label. ``I collapsed over the front of my drum set and got hauled off to the hospital,'' Haig remembered of the band's end. ``We were burned out.''

Acting was an interest since high school, and Haig attended and graduated from the Pasadena Playhouse, at that time, he said, ``one of the top four dramatic training grounds in the world.'' He was hired a month after he graduated for a low-budget western, playing one of Joaquin Murrieta's outlaws in ``The Firebrand.'' It was so low-budget, Sid recalled, that the actors doubled as both villains and heroes in different scenes.

Making a bizarre cult classic, Jack Hill's ``Spider Baby,'' with Lon Chaney Jr. in 1964 stood out in his mind for the opportunity to work with Chaney, whose last film it was. The film ``Che'' gave him the chance to work with Omar Sharif - ``a great film to work on, but it didn't make it big.''

Haig made about 10 films for Roger Corman, ``Galaxy of Terror,'' and ``Wizards of the Lost Kingdom, Part II'' among them. Haig laughed and said Corman was a marketing genius; there had never been a ``Part One.''

One of his more interesting roles was the bigoted Tex, whom Haig described as ``illiterate, dumb as a post and a mean-spirited racist,'' in TV's `Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.' ''

``I was getting mail from black activist groups congratulating me for portraying this guy like people can be.''

Other roles on TV included parts in the original ``The Untouchables,'' Lee Majors' ``The Fall Guy,'' John Byner's ``McNamara's Band'' and a role as the evil Dragos, Master of the Cosmos, in the popular, live-action Saturday morning children's show ``Jason of Star Command.'' More recently, he played Janitor Bob in ``Just the Ten of Us,'' but it was canceled soon after he started his recurring role.

Haig began seeing a pattern with his acting. ``Every show I was connected with got dumped, but people kept hiring me,'' he said philosophically. ``You have to develop an elephant skin to be in this business.''

``Life was one long interview and an improv,'' Haig said, offering a bit of pertinent advice: ``Try to live life like it's an improv and make the situation work for you.''

The workshop still has openings for interested teens. Call [phone].

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Photo: Sid Haig

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